As The Snow Falls
by kiku65
Summary: Sing a song of what never was, when a man was found in winter running from a forgotten past. AU of Spoils of War where things went ever so slightly wrong.


Disclaimer: Not mine. Nope.

Summery: Sing a song of what never was, when a man was found in winter running from a forgotten past. AU of Spoils of War where things went ever so slightly wrong. Take your time, this is a long fic. The tenses also jump around a bit, so keep a sharp eye on those. Plus one teeny-weeny line from _Firefly_, kudos to anyone who spots it.

Warning: Contains reference to torture, mental trauma and (very, very mild) hints of sexual abuse. Dark and sad. Even for me. You just _know_ this ain't gonna end well...

* * *

_Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden._

_-T.S. Eliot._

o.O.o

He sees the world in monochrome.

White snow, black footsteps in it. White moon, black trees to scratch its face. White of his hand, black liquid running down it in gentle rivers.

He sees white stars in a black sky, and closes his eyes.

Then there is red.

o.O.o

There was only one god of summer, but winter spawned a thousand spirits, riding the gales and stepping snowflakes through the trees. On stormy nights the elders would say _listen_, and when they did the howls of the wulves in the stricken woods would mingle with the gales and the laughter of the winter-sprites would echo down the chimneys, making her shiver.

The sprites were tricky and capricious as the season they adored. They could freeze the blood a starving hunter with little icicles as easily as they could gift him with freshly-laid tracks in the snow. They gave and took with the same hand and never a pause between each.

In the heart of the bitter cold five years ago they had gifted a child to the frozen land. A healthy baby boy, with sun-gold skin and polished ebony eyes, whose father had gone out to hunt as soon as the labour was over, vowing to bring back the fattest buck the forest could provide.

He had never returned. The spirits took payment in blood.

She had called the child Tomi.

He is with her now, scraping for edible tubers under the _cibo _bushes. Buried deep, hiding from the cold while awaiting the spring, but they were persistent. Hunger has made them so. The spirits dance in the branches of the evergreens above, scattering needles to fall and spear the ground. They make a moaning sound, like the whimper of ghosts and lost souls in twilight.

She follows the cries to the largest tree. The roots knurl to form a half-sphere shelter, a comma-shape obscured by the swirling white. She digs and strikes something hard.

Above her the winter-sprites chuckle and make Tomi laugh. He has always loved hearing them play.

She scraps the hoarfrost with numb fingers, pink blood blooming under her skin, revealing new white, smooth, and cold, drapes of grey covering it in a shroud and a tuft of hair.

A sprite in flesh, pale as the winter sky, curled like a sleeping child under a blanket of snow.

o.O.o

Kuo had been a good man. Kind, generous, loyal to all he held dear. He had married her during the spring dawning festival, swearing to look after her forever.

Perhaps he did. She is still alive, five years on, her child is healthy, and now as she kneels in the snow uncaring of the cold seeping through her skirt she wonders if he might have persuaded the spirits to send another gift. A replacement for what only he could give her, for what only he had _ever_ given her.

She touches the body before her. It is still warm.

o.O.o

_Beware the gifts of unseen givers_, her people might say, because that which is generous must always be paid for. In hunger or loss or more often blood, gods and ghosts gave nothing for free, and though the spirits of winter were but lesser gods they were many. They demanded more than simple thanks.

She takes bronze tokens to the shrine by the fireplace and an offering of many red lanterns outside her door to warm their frozen hearts to mercy. For every day the stranger lay tossing and moaning in her unused bed she makes another gift, until on the third his fever breaks and he lies white and still instead.

Perhaps it is a good sign. She isn't sure, and the village was too far away for her to ask a healer.

On the fourth day the sun dawned on clear skies and turned the forest to emerald and diamond.

o.O.o

_Step, step, step. _

coming back, they're coming back oh they come back can't go they're coming back...

_Step, pause._

opening it's opening can't go not again no again no...

"_Shit." Disgust. Shock. "Get up here and look at this."_

_Steps. More? Why more? Only one was needed. One to, to..._

_Someone was throwing up. Another swore by an unknown deity. _

"_Oh no..."_

o.O.o

Colour bleeds in through the cracks in the window. Such a strange window, cloudy and thick, but the light still manages to stab his eyes. He sees the bed he was in and panics, because when you were put on a bed They came and cut you open.

They are coming. He knows it as he knows the sunrise and the stars at night; it is immutable and eternal, written in the numbers of the universe. He will run and They will hunt him and the black door in his mind that held back the monsters will stay there forever.

They will take him back, take him back to cry and bleed and cower in the dark away from the stars and sun, where light never reached, not even in his dreams. Once he had dreamt of things so wonderful (_of stars in the night sky and a city made of light_), but now they merely reflect his waking. Darkness and shadows.

He sits up and wonders that They had not tied him down. Maybe They thought he was weak, helpless. Maybe They expected him to be confused and give up.

Well, They are wrong.

Splinters claw at bare skin as he steps across the boards. He reaches the door and looks behind at the trail of red footprints behind him, before carrying on without a pause.

The pain was nothing now. He was too used to it.

Filthy cloth rasps as he steps quietly down the hallway, the same shapeless grey shirt and pants he had escaped in, that hang around him in itching rags. No shoes. A tag on his arm and another in the books, but he had pulled off the former and watched it fly, diving into the water like some strange bird. The memory tasted of metal and blood, but then most of them did.

He sees the woman when he reached the stairs.

A shriek like that of some nocturnal creature, obsidian gleaming in polished gold as her eyes widened, the bucket of warm water dropping from her hands. He drops too, but it feels like flying, flying like a bird down the stairs (_or through the stars, but how does he know?_), the sensation so wonderful he almost weeps.

He does weep, when his burning feet slip and the splinters dig into his knees as the water soaks his pant legs. He weeps and weeps, because They were coming for him and now he was too weak to even run.

o.O.o

Darkness lies over the cottage in a blanket, shielding those inside from the whips of the blizzard. The sprites are back and dancing in the eaves, pulling at the thatch with splintered fingers to rescue their imprisoned brother, who shouts at them for help in the grip of nightmares.

She makes a gift of honeyed graincakes and bright ribbons, begging them to leave her be and let the stranger stay. Eventually they accept and depart with parting wails, leaving the house still in midnight. The only noises left are the little sleep-sounds of her son and the moans of the stranger, pleading for rescue.

She goes upstairs to him. He shivers as she draws near, as though sensing her presence and fearing it. She feels her heart break a little at the sight, for when standing he had stood he had been taller than her, taller than anyone she had ever know. Even wasted from starvation he had been big, as though he truly were a spirit of the winter come down from the mountains to shelter in a human house.

But this is no spirit, she tells herself as she had told herself in the forest while she brushed the snow from his hair. Just a man, a tall, sick, starving man with bad dreams. She strokes his too-long face and prays for healing.

The spirits did not heal. But humans did so all the time.

They had more practise, after all.

o.O.o

When he wakes he says nothing, but scrambles from the bed and sits cowering in the farthest corner, as far away as possible from the door. He shivers when she approaches and mewls with fear when she lays a hand on his shoulder, jerking back from the touch as though burnt. Then he mewls again and shuts his eyes, flinching away from an imagined blow.

She leaves her bowl of porridge in the corner and goes down to the kitchen to cry.

When she comes back up the bowl is still there untouched, and the man is rocking back and forth, muttering to himself, a thin gabble of words that made no sense. As she watches he puts up a hand, running through his hair disjointedly, the fingers stiff and clumsy.

He clutches at the bangs he grabs; fingers knotted through the strands as he pulls his hand into a fist. He rocks again; back and forth, back and forth. Mumbled words drop forth like drops of blood from his torn feet, or the red bled into his cracked lips.

When she tries to guide him back on the bed he doesn't fight. But he does scream.

o.O.o

That night she stays outside her room, listening. She expects the stranger to sleep but finds a flaw in her thoughts; an animal wounded and cornered doe not waste its final breath in dreamless dark. Every last moment is precious and must be lived fully.

She cannot make him understand she means no harm. She wonders if he has any understanding left.

o.O.o

"_What do we do?"_

"_Put him out of his misery?"_

"_No... No. We'll take him with us. He might know something..."_

_Shaking. "Why would they do this? Why not just kill him?"_

_Hollow. "This was more fun."_

o.O.o

He doesn't understand this place.

His imprisonment with Them had been simple. Nightmares each night and darkness in daytime. Food three times daily and water that made him dizzy. Four barred walls, a pet on display in its little cage, such a bad little pet, but he couldn't remember what he had done and They never told him. Just said he'd been naughty and evil and had to be locked up.

He heard the word _forever_ in their faces; he read it in their eyes.

But They were not here. Now he was shut away again, but with light and two meals, not three, and the dizziness was with uncertainty. Instead of Them there was only a woman, who might be Them but might not and he really didn't understand, didn't understand at all. She had a kind face and a smile like sunshine but he wasn't fooled, oh no. There had been kindness and smiles from Them as well at first, pity for their bad little pet, broken little pet. He wasn't going to trust smiles and kindness again, not ever.

A bowl on the floor. She was all he saw here, while They had been many and diverse, and she had left a bowl on the floor. She had dragged him to the hateful bed and pulled a blanket over him (_still shivers_), then returned and left a bowl on the floor.

He is hunched on the bed (_don't dare move_) and staring. At the bowl on the floor.

It smells wonderful.

He rocks; once back, once forth. Brings a straggling bang of hair around to chew on it.

The bowl was still on the floor.

He slides off the bed (_bad pet!_). His feet touch the floor and he tenses, flattening like a spider. His nostrils flared, eyes darting from the door, to the bowl, to the door again.

He edges forward a few steps. Stops.

He can see inside the bowl now; it was filled with lumpy yellow mush that smelt of sweetness. His mouth fills with water and his stomach with acid, gurgling against the skin of his belly.

He reaches out. His fingertips brush the rim.

There is not a sound, not a sigh.

With one movement he snatches the bowl, spills curds, scurries back to the bed. Lumpy yellow goo decorates the front of his shirt, flower-hearts in a storm cloud, but he doesn't care because he's dipping in his fingers, bringing up to suck some of the liquid-solid off.

He whimpers, with pleasure instead of fear but the fear isn't gone. He is always afraid.

He scoops up the mush (_tastes of sugar and sweet milk; They had given him that once when he didn't fuss over the needles_), shovels it in and whimpers a little more. Oh he will be punished for leaving the bed, but he thinks it is worth it now with his belly full and the taste of honey coating his sticky-sweet tongue.

Strange honey. Tangy and a little bitter. It makes his head swim, so much that when the woman enters he isn't very afraid.

(_Just a little, but then it never leaves_)

As his vision greys he wonders if she know what he did that was so very wrong.

o.O.o

The herbs work well. Sleepflower to make him drowse a little, numbplant to take away the pain. He watches with dull eyes as she pulls up an old tin bathtub, drawing water up the crooked stairs until steam rises from the rim.

She lifts him, careful not to jolt. He struggles sluggishly and makes a high-pitched sound in the back of his throat, a dreamy scream swallowed down in fear. He makes it again when she puts him down softly, takes off his shirt and trousers, and deposits him in her old tin bathtub, taking up an old rag to wipe away the filth encrusted on his skin.

She scrubs as gently as she dares but not as much as she should, as he struggles listlessly and moans. The rag reveals a tapestry woven in scars, old warped flesh over his ribs and silk-painting bruises forming a summer sunset over his spine. His soles show his life, a life spent in mud and grime, running and pain and a thousand little nicks and cuts. She wipes them tenderly, oh-so delicately; as she might do for Tomi or one of the injured animals he had taken home and begged her to heal.

She moves up to his hands, rubbing dirt from the creases in his palms, the scar around his right wrist like a bracelet of warped tissue. From his upper arm to his shoulder, caressing a thread-thin line of white that made him shiver, then to his face. A straggling beard covers most of his chin and his hair had grown almost past his shoulders, wild and tangled as a mop of knotted yarn. She cleans it as best she can, noticing how his eyes dropped and squeezed shut when she tried to meet them.

She considers cutting the matted strands but decides against it. There had been enough struggles that day. So she scrubs them instead, scrubs and scrubs until they reflect the candlelight wetly, plastered flat to his head and trailing around his ears. She sees the bangs and thinks of the wulves that haunt the forest in the blizzards, ghosting through the trees as silver-black shadows.

The herbs wear off as she dresses him in his old clothes, and when she draws a tattered blanket around his shoulders he scuttles back to his corner, mantle trailing like a bird's broken wings. Clipped and torn to keep it from the sky, forever imprisoned on the weary earth.

o.O.o

She thinks perhaps he is mute. A boy had been born so the year before her, ears of stone and a tongue of wood. He would grunt and gobble, wordless as the beasts he tended as they played in the mud between the wooden huts, oversized head lolling as bloodsuckers swarmed around his ears, planets orbiting a hideous sun.

He had died years back, his lungs clogged with fluid to drown him as he slept. The afflicted were always so very fragile.

_Fragile_ sums up her new guest well, but she can see this was not always so. He might cower and tremble and cringe from her touch but always there is _something_ behind his face, looking out. Watching and rising and being pushed back down, the merest flash of a fang before the fear suppressed it, hiding it before she could see and... What?

She has seen the scars. She doesn't need to ask.

For a while he is too scared to even sleep. Night after night she goes up the stairs to her now-occupied room (_and it feels so very right, having another in there_) and watches him huddle in his corner, gazing back with shadowed eyes. But one night she visits, to find him curled, bare and wounded feet showing from under his filthy pant legs, his face pale with the exhaustion that comes from endless fear. He looks so very young, young and old in a strange and terrible way, that she pauses as he growls wordlessly, tossing and turning in the grip of nightmares.

She thinks he is mute, until in his dreams he murmurs _Atlantis_.

o.O.o

The day afterwards she does things differently.

He wakes. Always there is a moment, a sliver of a heartbeat when he forgets where he is and a new kind of terror – fresh and uncertain – flashes across his face before awareness returns and brings with it merely a dull fear. When he had first woken the freshness had not faded, but now he is weary. It is so very tiring to be afraid all the time.

Then he sees her, and the terror returns.

She says nothing, does nothing. She merely sits on her heels with a bowl in front of her, filled with mashed grains mixed with honey and milk, the same as any other day. He shrinks back and watches her warily.

_I have brought food_, she says.

A quick tilt of the head sideways, a question without words.

_I know you can speak. _

He lowers his gaze; she has never been close enough to see his eyes before he turns away. She wonders if they are amber, like a wulf._ I am not going to hurt you. _She starts to edge closer and he starts to shake, waves of shivers spreading from his spine to his soles. _I am trying to help you_. He shakes his head jerkily, pressing back into the wall._ Won't you let me help you? _

_Please don't hurt me. _

She freezes as his head raises, and she sees his eyes. Such strange eyes, brown and emerald and amber radiating from the pupils, as if he had walked in a sunlit forest and gathered the colours as he saw them.

He drops his gaze hurriedly, and the hazel disappears under longs lashes. _Please, please don't..._

_I would never. _

_Why not?_

She stares at him dumbfounded. _Why would I?_

The hazel appears, misty with confusion. _But... the equation follows... being generates energy and pain. Laws in the numbers. Can't be changed. _

Her heart breaks a little in non-understanding (_but she understands enough_), and she reaches out by instinct in a comforting touch. He shies away. _I'm sorry, sorry... _

_Hush._ She is so close now she can see the dewdrop-tears forming at the corners of his eyes, the thin white scar near his temple, the lines on his face stark in the windows glaring light. He smells of salt, and amica soap, and fear._ I'm not angry. Not at you. _

He looks up again, his gaze wavering and fearful, but she knows he won't look away. Her words have freed him from something, but she doesn't know what, only that she can see the relief in his eyes. The intensity and the strange colour of them make her drop her own gaze and back away.

_Are you hungry?_

He looks at her a long time, the question encompassing them both until she can feel it spread, soaring from the room to the star-filled sky above them. He swallows and nods.

_Yes. _

o.O.o

"_How is he?"_

"_Bad. The Wraith did a number on him."_

"_I take it he doesn't know anything of use."_

"_Nothing that could help us. He doesn't remember his own name."_

"_Will anyone come looking?"_

"_There's no-one left to come."_

o.O.o

The birthing of all things are painful; he knows this.

Once he had sheltered in a village, crouching in a herd-shelter filled with the smell of rotting grass and fresh dung while in the ramshackle hut next-door a woman screamed and cried to disturb his fitful rest. Curiosity has overcome his caution, and he had peered inside just in time to see a squirming blood-streaked baby take its first breath.

Afterwards of course they had stoned him and driven him away. But he was used to that.

He equates pain with life; it is so simple he wonders how others could not miss it. Pain is life and life is pain; when They had kept him the pain had been smothered in numbness and he had been dead in all but his deepest place. Then he had escaped and pain had returned, reminding him with each heartbeat that he was alive and free and this was the price. The price he had to pay.

He pays it gladly.

This pain is new, and a birthing pain. Hope had died with Them; They had killed it with sly words, whispers in the dark, sharp needles and tainted water and _aloneness_. Now it is reborn, and it hurt (_like the knives in the sunlight, like boots with steel toes_), but like all newborns it was... precious.

As was the creator.

Hope was the brother of trust (_he'd had a brother once, before the world ended_). Trust is incarnate in golden skin and shimmering black eyes. It wears a simple cotton robe-dress and smelt of... something. It makes him think of wide open fields and a small red flower with many petals.

_How are you feeling?_

He tenses. His mind knows she is no threat – no, his mind _hopes _she is not because he is so tired, so very tired of being afraid – but his body sees her form and remembers that not all pain comes from birthing.

Anything with two hands could throw stones, hit with sticks, shoot arrows. Two feet could kick and maim, the mind that controlled them could plot more hurt. Animals hunted, but sentients planned their cruelties.

_Scars fade. Time heals._ They had asked him the same question every waking, with darkness lurking behind mirrored eyes. How are you feeling? What do you remember?

And under the words: Will we have to kill you today?

The black door stayed up, and so the answer was _no_. But it was cracking daily, and They had known it. _He_ knew it.

_I am glad._ They had never said that. _I have better food today. You are strong enough now to eat it. _

He sees a thick brew in the bowl: a soupy liquid that glows a fierce orange-red flecked with green. The smell alone would keep him going, and the taste of it, oh the taste...

_Is it good?_

Savoury yet sweet, tangy yet smooth, filling yet it left his stomach begging. Without thinking he asks _Is there more?_

She smiles and takes the bowl, leaving momentarily before returning with one bigger, brimming, and holding also a chunk of grainy brown bread floating like a boat in a storm-tossed lake. He doesn't so much as eat it as inhale it, pausing at intervals to breathe.

He is so busy with the food that he completely forgets the woman is still standing there, and so when she appears almost within touching distance he starts. The broth slops over his shirt to add yet another stain.

_I am sorry._ She holds her hands towards him palm up and oh no that was _bad_, that was so very bad he drops the bowl entirely and scuttles backwards out of reach, feeling the fear rise up again. Touching, touching like that, that was bad. Too bad, so bad They had never even...

She looks startled and hurt. He tries to calm but oh the fear was strong and so was the memory-that-was-not-a-memory. Of touching and pain and _death_. They had always said he shouldn't remember, and They were right, only right thing They had ever said was his not-memories were terrible and evil. Like he had been.

_I won't hurt you. _

_Never..._ He knows, but the rest of him _doesn't_, and he doesn't know how to tell her and what if she gives up on him and makes him leave? Drives him out like the others and he'd be back to running again, but it wouldn't work because They would catch up or he'd make a mistake and then he'd be back to the safety and despair of four stones walls. They wouldn't risk letting him see the sun again, not after this, not after last time, when he'd seen his chance and run.

He has to try. Try and tell her, but not too much because he is a broken thing really, and broken things get thrown away, abandoned.

_There has only been a little, a very little of you. Laws in the numbers state balance must be maintained. No balance here. The rest is far greater; the black door doesn't hold it. All bad and broken_ and _no_, why had he said that? Now she will know, he can see the knowing in her eyes. He is going to be thrown out with the trash. Again.

But she doesn't. Just sits in her heels and looks at him with an expression that makes his chest burn, but not in the usual way. A better or worse way, he wasn't sure which._ I understand. There have been... bad parts for me as well. Sometimes it is difficult to remember they are still not happening. _

The fear eases. They had never felt pain, not even when he'd bitten and scratched before learning better... not _real_ pain, only anger. He isn't sure They could be hurt or unhappy.

For some reason a part of him hopes They can not.

_What happened?_ She asks it so gently.

_I... _he isn't even sure. He can't remember the actions, only the result._ I have no understanding. _

She edges around the question as he might have a baited trap, then asks one worse. One he couldn't ask himself.

_Where is your home? We should know. We could take you back. Wouldn't you like that?_

He feels his chest constricted, squeezing down on his heart, his lungs, squeezing the breath from him.

The door cracks. Memories stream through the gap it leaves behind.

_I, I don't, there's no... _he feels the words swell like bloating corpses in his throat, making him gasp. _Blossoms of fire. They left and they wouldn't take me with them, I asked them but they wouldn't and it's all gone I felt it leave they're all, all gone I..._

How strange. He had cried before as he cried now, stupid and weak as he was, so filled up with hurt it _had_ to fall as tears, but he had never provoked the action in another. Contempt and laughter, pity or disgust, but not empathy. Not compassion. Not a pair of gentle arms around his shoulders and a warm body pressed against his, and he didn't mind the touch now, because it's very different from before that they can't be linked, they must be different somehow. As different as summer from winter, as warm flesh to cold stone.

_I want to go home_, he whispers through the sobs in his throat. _But... it's not there anymore. It went away. _

A hand strokes his hair, brushes away the tears clinging to its tips and he leans into its touch. He feels a new hunger, hunger for companionship instead of food. A longing for someone who might care if he is hurt or upset, for a universe that might know he is there. He starts to swallow the tears, but the hand touches him again, this time on the cheek.

_Let it go. You'll feel better. _

So he does. He lets the tears fall and cries for his home, for the family he must have had, for the friends he knows he had but can't quite remember. He cries for his pain and the fear and the emptiness. He cries for the holes in his mind that made this so.

When he is done, leaning against her exhausted, he finds she was right. The poison has been drawn, and the wound finally started to heal.

_Are you all right?_

_No_, he says, feeling the last of the venom fade. _But... I might be_.

o.O.o

He is healing.

The second bathing is easier. He does the actions himself (_she cannot understand his reticence in her seeing him unclothed_), but lets her cut his hair, trim his beard at her insistence and despite the sharp blades. Dressed in her husband's old clothes and with his hair tied in a doubled-up tail he looks at least related to humanity, even if he skirts its borders a little.

Tomi asks if the stranger is his new daddy now. She leaves the room a small while to cry before going back.

Her son does not ask the question again, but he does not leave the stranger alone. The stranger himself does not seem to mind; a child is no threat he can understand and so he is able to relax a little. Tomi toddles beside him in daylight and curls beside him at night, unwilling to let him out of his sight.

It is inevitable some of the dreams will be overheard.

One day they come to her, both excited, the stranger standing taller than she remembers. He shocks her by looking her in the eye as he speaks and Tomi grins.

_I think we might know my name. _

She casts a look askance at her son, but nods at him to continue. This is important to them both, and if he wishes a name brought by a child's imagination... so be it. It was better than no name at all.

_I heard him_, Tomi puts in breathlessly. _He said the word McKay. When I told him he said _Sheppard.

She looks at the stranger, her stranger. _Your name?_

He nods, his smile lighting his eyes to a forest in summer sunlight. _I think... Sheppard. My name is Sheppard. _

That night they eat together to celebrate, the three of them. The stranger – Sheppard, smiles again for the second time only she has seen. It is beautiful in a way she cannot describe.

She wishes he would smile more.

o.O.o

He may be healing, but Sheppard isn't safe yet. He still cries at night when he thinks she can't see; he can't walk more than a few paces without having to sit or crouch until his legs stopped trembling. And there are... other things.

Whatever had been done to him had left scars not only over most of his skin but his mind as well. Lucidity is more the norm now than before, but even when a broken thing gets fixed the cracks still show. Some things don't heal.

A dropped pot sends him running into a corner to cower and whimper until she coaxes him back out with a bowl of his favourite soup. The sight of the open fire in the main kitchen-living area downstairs mesmerizes him as a snake-lizard might a bird, his face holding a terrible fear mixed with captivation. And always, always he looks out the windows as he passes them, or listens to the sounds of the cottage when the darkness brings quiet, waiting for his past to catch up with him.

Sometimes the triggers are things she doesn't see. Never could.

She finds Sheppard tonight outside; uncaring of the harsh winter chill as he stares up at the velvet black speckled with ice-blue and white. _Come inside. It is cold. _

_I can hear them singing_, he says.

_There are no birds. _

_Not them. The stars. I can hear them. _

_What do they sound like? _She asks with half-amusement and all foreboding, afraid of the answer. He watches them a little more.

_Creaking floorboards_, he says flatly, before going inside.

o.O.o

Even the spirits of winter need to sojourn a little sometimes. Not as much as their earthbound brother; he is still fragile from long endurance and hurt, the broken parts not quite knitted together yet. He can chop wood for a while before having to sit down and still shaking limbs, or grub for roots near the forest edge (_he won't go further; when she asks he says he's afraid of what the shadows under the trees hold_) for near half a morning before he has to steady himself against a nearby trunk, but anything more and... well. He is still growing into his freedom, and like all growing things he needs rest.

The spirits simply stop when they get bored of creating blizzards.

Their resting is her action; with the blizzards gone she could reach the village in time for the midwinter festivals. Four days of free gifts, open fires and companionship, a welcome respite in the middle of the killing cold. She had always enjoyed them before.

Of course before things had been different.

In light of what had happened to him (_and he still wouldn't say_), Sheppard copes with it well. He doesn't like the crowds, or the staring, or the way people would cross over the other side of the square rather than be near him, but he says nothing about it. She doesn't miss the wild look in his eyes though, or the way his hands would clench and unclench whenever someone gets too close.

The right one is scarred more than usual. She asked about that once, but when she saw his face she hadn't asked again.

That had been the second night he went out to look at the stars.

Now he stays close by her elbow, watchful and wary as a guardhound, his eyes scanning for threats, flaws, faces in the crowds. For Them, although she doesn't understand who They are, and hopes she never does. Like the filth it implies, it would sully her just with its knowledge.

She takes him directly to the Elders; they stare at Sheppard when they see him but show no other reaction out of common manners. The eldest, Old Yoru with his leg withered after a wulf tore it open in his youth, skims her stranger over carefully, checking his shaking form for vitality, signs of plague, maiming or malformation. Sheppard only holds her eyes during the inspection, his own dark with deep fear held in check only by his trust in her.

Finally he is pronounced fit and well, and she breathes easier. His colouring and height alone wouldn't merit being driven away, but she still tenses when Yoru mumbles with the others and asks Sheppard to leave a while. He does so with a backwards glance, and she knows that outside he will sit in a huddle outside the split-timber village council hall, knees drawn up and Tomi beside him on guard.

As it is her fears are groundless. They merely wish to impress on her that he cannot be allowed to wander alone; as if she didn't know that already. She smiles and nods and returns to Sheppard outside with a heart lighter than the snowflakes that are starting to fall around them.

He sees her smile and answers with a shy one of his own, half-hidden by his straggling beard. The day seems brighter afterwards, but she cannot understand why.

o.O.o

"_Seems like you were right. No-one's looking for him."_

"_We should kill him. After all he's done..."_

"_He's no threat."_

"_He might be. One day."_

o.O.o

He doesn't like crowds. Herds of people make it easier for Them to hide; it had happened before while he was still running. He would steal concealing clothes and creep into a village, only to see Them at the last minute, hiding in the alleys or stopped at the stalls waiting for him, spreading out to surround him or trying to scare him into a corner.

They would have a hard time concealing themselves here, though. Most of Them had been closer to him in skin tone, nearly his height and with brown hair. These people were small, round-faced, golden-skinned and black-haired, their eyes tilted and upturned at the corners, completely different and therefore safer.

But not safe. They were still human, and humans had the capacity for betrayal as no other animal did. He was one himself, and he should know.

He sits through the festival, bundled to the ears in layers upon layers of cloth, watching the bonfires burn as the tiny beings around him scuttle with food and ale, his carer – he heard someone call her Rui, but it seemed such a small name for one of such importance – close but never far from his sight. Soon it is time for the dances to begin.

A man comes out. He is dressed in rags, but strange ones; strips white and pale blue to match the winter sky, fluttering in the slight breeze. He bows to his audience, then to the elders, and begins as the drums start.

The villagers clap and whoop as he dances, spinning like a snow-flurry, dancing like a dervish as the pace of the drumbeats grows faster and faster. He finds himself caught in the beat, enthralled by the spinning strands of blue and white, his feet tapping of their own accord to the rhythm of the drums.

The dancer backflips, his audience howling a shrill yodel as he lands. It is done again in order; once, twice, three times. He finds himself howling as well on the third go, caught up in the web spun in the wake of the swirling figure.

The dancer spins, jumps, lands again. He undulates a shrill call that rises above the other voices, uncaring for once that he is making himself noticed.

Other voices answer. They are not human.

The dancer carries on, lost in his own pattern, but the rest of the villagers are silent now, looking at each other in puzzlement as the voices of the wulf rise above the drums.

Rui hurries forward, taking his elbow gently before she steers him away. He doesn't want to go, because this new music is just as fine as the human type, and it calls to a place in his being he never knew he had. For a moment he can almost feel tin-sharp scent of snow in the air, the thrill of the hunt and the taste of blood under winter moons.

_We must leave_, she says, and so he does. But he doesn't forget the sounds of the wulf.

o.O.o

Her mistake, and Sheppard's, goes unpunished but not unnoticed. As the year swings and turns towards summer the elders talk with her again. This time they wish to know where he hails from.

She is forced to admit she doesn't know. Yoru, who has travelled, speaks of a race of people with his colouring that live in the far north where winter is yearlong. Most of his story sounds like fables, describing how they wear metal on their bodies and worship strange bloodthirsty gods, but she leaves it be. They all know he most likely came through the Sacred Water, but at least the northern barbarians are of this world, and more familiar than whatever lies on the other side of the steel ring.

Then they summon Sheppard.

He is a good man, this she knows in her heart, but whatever had been done to him, whatever broken pieces lay shattered where his pride was, makes him unable to stand up to their comparatively gentle questioning. He admits he is hunted, admits he has been hurt, even admits to the holes in his mind that make him incapable of saying why these things had been done. All he can give them is a few fragments; the name of Atlantis and a description of his hunters.

Atlantis is not new. They had heard of the Shining City, and word had reached them of its destruction at the hands of demons before he ever had. When he hears this he blinks and looks at the ground, perhaps wondering if he should mourn for something not even a memory anymore.

His pursuers are more difficult. Word will get around, but their village is isolated, on an isolated world. Few ever come there through the Water that are welcome.

They allow him to leave. Unless They find him he is no threat, and if They are vengeful enough to harm those sheltering him while he is there, chances are They will do it even after he is gone. Besides which he is tall and strong, an asset they cannot afford to lose over a rumour of fear.

She is grateful, but their cool pragmatism wounds her. There should be more to life than mere survival.

o.O.o

Winter retreats slowly in the face of the sun. Sheppard grows stronger with new food and new air, but he notices the strain he is putting on her limited resources. Concerned he might starve them all, he offers to hunt for her and Tomi as the other men do for their families. She allows this, but doubts anything could come of it. He has such a gentle soul she wonders if he could ever kill.

Her surprise is great, therefore, when he returns home carrying several braces of ground dwelling birds a bare three days after he first set out to be taught. Her kin-cousin Jun, who had offered to teach him in exchange for his first kill, follows with a snowy treerat killed by a well-thrown stone.

Afterwards, as they drink water flavoured with spices and Tomi plucks the birds with clumsy enthusiasm Jun waxes ecstatic over her stranger's hunting skill, saying _lucky_ and _skilled,_ and _a natural hunter, born to it _while his pupil sits and blushes at the tabletop when she smiles at him. He mumbles a few words before leaving, but his pride in what he has done is obvious.

The next time he hunts he takes her husbands old recurve bow with him. He brings back a _jerska_ buck with an arrow in its neck.

She can't remember the last time they ate so well.

o.O.o

She moves back into her bed, which is problematic since it's already occupied. But of all the people least likely to take advantage of that Sheppard rises high on that list, even if he does regard her with a strange wonder-awe, as though still surprised she hasn't betrayed him.

The first night is uncomfortable. He tosses and squirms most of the night, still not used to frequent body contact, and she is irritated by his wriggling enough to go back to her pallet and blanket on the kitchen floor.

The second night they sleep at each far end, toe-to-head. It's awkward but they do finally manage to drift off without too much trouble.

The third night he doesn't even stir when she gets in beside him, and she lays her head next to his without any qualms.

The nightmares come back that night; he wakes screaming of monsters in the river and metal in the dark. When he realises where he is and who with he calms instantly, still half-asleep. She sends him back to a peaceful slumber stroking his cheek and murmuring with a few gentle words.

They don't speak about it the day after.

But he doesn't ask her to leave when she enters that night.

o.O.o

"_He's not going to remember."_

"_Perhaps that's a good thing."_

"_Maybe. But there's another way."_

_Creaking. Like little screams. Maybe his got trapped in here and–_

_A hand on his shoulder. A sting inside his elbow. "Time to go to sleep again."_

o.O.o

Spring has finally arrived, or so he is told. He has never paid much attention to the seasons; the world was hot or cold, dry or damp without him naming it one thing or the other. Apparently the melting snow and high winds meant that winter is ending, but he doesn't much care.

He _does_ care that it meant there would be more game in the woods with new births. Hunting has become his passion, his life. When he is hunting he is free from fear, from regret or the need to remember, free from the eternal walls that cage him even with Rui. When he is holding his bow or skinning dagger it is possible to believe that he might even beat Them if They ever showed up. He is no longer Their broken little pet, but _Sheppard_, someone with strength and skill.

And he is repaying Rui. Every joint of meat on the table, every new skin to keep her (_them_) warm at night paid back a little of what he owes her – his health, his freedom, his sanity. He even takes Tomi on a trip to teach him, so that if (_when_) They catch up with him she will still have someone to care for her properly.

The day after that hunting trip he awakes from a dreamless sleep brought about by a belly full of meat to Rui's excited shaking. After his first panic-stricken leap out of bed to grab his dagger (_he won't be taken alive again_) she calms him and pulls him arm gently.

_Come and see. _

He follows obediently, trusting her without a second thought. They had gained his obedience as well, but not his trust. Trust was something you had to earn.

She guides him down the stairs, past the grain store-cum-work area, through the kitchen and outside to where the fruit trees were growing around the cottage in a circle. Most are dead-brown; a few sporting a few swelling green buds or delicate leaves, but one was different. He sees that even without her lightly tugging him towards it.

The tree is covered in golden snow.

_It's in bloom_, Rui said, seeing him stare at it enraptured._ Look; already there are hummers attracted to them. In summer the flowers will turn into fruit._

_They're like you_, he says without thinking.

_What are?_

_The flowers. All golden. _He reaches out to touch them, feeling the petals fall through his fingers and swirl around him. They are soft and smooth._ Like you. _

She laughs. _How strange. The fruits are the colour of your skin – like clouds in a sunrise. _

He says nothing in reply, but holds the petals in his hand and wonders.

o.O.o

The warmer weather _does_ bring more game, and soon Sheppard is brings back more meat than they could possibly eat alone. She salts the surplus, stretches the skins to dry, and takes them to the village when the eight-day market opens. There she trades the precious food for new herbs, an extra set of eating utensils and a bolt of russet cloth, the colour of dead leaves in autumn. The skins buy her tea, which she hasn't tasted since the year before last. Tea is expensive for widows.

When she arrives home the russet cloth becomes a shirt, long-sleeved enough to fit her stranger without the discomfort she knows her husbands clothes bring sometimes. His face as he fingers the bright colour makes her eyes sting, but she doesn't understand why. She is happy, he is happy. So why does she cry?

That night she sits cross-legged and performs the tea ceremony, whisking the dried leaves lightly in the heirloom pot before pouring it into two enamelled bowls. Properly it should be done on her father's woven kneeling mat with her mother's cleaning cloth, but both had been sold to pay for food long ago. Sheppard watches with interest and some incredulity as she offers one of the bowls to him.

Tea drinking is an art. While she raises the cup to her lips and sips slowly Sheppard tips his too fast and ends up spilling hot liquid over his nose and beard. For moment, as he yelps and drops the bowl before rubbing the scald, she worries she might have sent him back to the dark place she had found him in, where he had acquired so many of his scars. It is all too easy to imagine it happening.

Instead he simply rubs his nose a little and shrugs at her sheepishly, unscalded areas turning red with embarrassment. With his too-long face and the amber-coloured tea staining his beard he looks so like the billy that decimated her cooking herbs when her husband still lived that she laughs helplessly, unable to stop.

When he finally realises her laughter is not meant to hurt, he joins in.

o.O.o

She is fascinated by his feet. Long and thin, unlike the petite ones of every other person she had ever known. _Runner's feet_, she said once during midday meal. The expression on his face when he looks up from his bowl of curds and ground grains makes her smile falter.

He stares at her a moment, before turning back to his meal.

_I'm good at running_, he says simply.

o.O.o

_The black door has risen, shiny and new. He can't get past it, and he's not sure he wants to. There are monsters on the other side. _

_They're holding him down again, scorching his body with bright lights. "He's struggling too much. Sedative!"_

_The sting inside his elbow returns, so when they open him up he doesn't resist._

o.O.o

The russet shows up bright against misty grey-green and brown, but this is not hard to counter. A hooded leather tabard and rough woven pants muted the brave colours, and this was usually not even needful. Buck sought to escape death by catching scent and sudden movements, not the bright flash of brown-red in the hazy twilight.

He loves the deep woods. Here the crabbed trees grow close enough to form protective tunnels, interspersed with groves of evergreens, curtained in hanging lichens, and carpeted in moss. Hunting is often no more than a complicated game of hide-and-seek twinned with chases through green mist. The very air is thick with life, and when he breathes it so is he.

He is sad to leave it at the end of the hunt. But only for a little while.

Outside the forest the blossoms were spreading. Spring was well underway, and as he hoists the dead buck further up his shoulders he can hear birds singing from the cover of the new leaves. Chinks in the tangled green wall shows the houses like dropped boulders or the mounds of groundrats with smoke rising from the chimneys. Somewhere in there is Rui, trading for more tea and food, Tomi straying from her side to gaze longingly at the sweetmeats on the stalls next-door.

He is almost there, at the edge of the market, when he hears the first whine.

A rising, piercing call that sets his teeth on edge and makes his spine tingle. He shivers and looks up, ignoring Rui's anxious question, looking south. Past the houses.

The whine is getting louder.

Now Rui can hear it as well and she is screaming, screaming for Tomi and for them to_ get out_, to _run_, because that sound is the sound of demons and hell has come to play in his little corner of the world.

The groundrats' nest has been broken open and they are scurrying around, scurrying and screaming like Rui, and a shadow crosses the sun. It swoops like a striking raptor-bird and stabs the ground with white, releasing its burden of three dark figures before chasing a knot of fleeing villagers and...

Gone. As if they have never been.

The dark figures are moving now. They are separating like hunting wulf and shooting blue lightning, pulling people to the ground with crackles and smells of ozone. He pulls a person himself – Rui, with her arms clasped around her son and her face stripy with tears – and runs.

He is good at running.

Behind them people are screaming louder, a horrible wail of pain that dies to no more than a wispy murmur, and a few have attached themselves to his charges. Herd instinct, follow the leader, go where safety looks most likely. And if danger follows, well... better to lose an odd-coloured stranger, or a woman slowed by a child, than your own life. He sees their dirty, terrified little thoughts and hates them because he understands. Hates them because he can't despise them, the luxury of assurance lost in a place before stones walls, where ghosts dwelt.

They are nearly out of the village.

Rui cries out, falls as ozone crackles blue around her legs. He slows to help her as the rest of the rats flee, and feels the blow before he ever sees it.

He looks up into the face of a ghost.

(_There had been a place before the stone wall the door had kept back but no more_)

He sees a death-mask in greenish white, slitted yellow eyes that spear into his own, long fingers on a hand marred by a terrible wound.

(_It had living walls and spun bars and smelt of death_)

It reaches down almost interrogatively, tracing the lines on his face in a jagged pattern, wandering down past his eye to his chin, his chest, pulling aside his tabard, ripping his shirt open.

(_It had burns and sharp knives and nasty nasty things_)

He feels his own heart fluttering against its palm, a line like a wet scab pulling open in a kiss.

(_And it had his freedom in there somewhere, if he only dared look_)

He feels his dagger, jammed against his hip. He feels a bone handle carved with zigzag lines, a blade curved as a scimitar moon.

He draws it and stabs upwards.

Black rain falls, and the hand withdraws. A gurgling sound rises above the screaming and Rui's little sobs, counterpart to Tomi's wailing. He throws himself at the monster (_ghost_), attacking less out of bravery than the simple knowledge that he doesn't want to die and it will kill him if he doesn't kill it first. And that a skinning knife in the throat won't be enough to stop it.

It pulls the offending weapon out and throws it aside, hissing as it closes in so they stand nose-to-nose. Hissing at him, yellow eyes ablaze with fury (_hunger_) and gloating (_enjoyment_). He doesn't give it time finish glorying in his weaponless state, but grips his hands around its neck and twists.

The sound of the breaking is surprisingly quiet.

It's quite simple, if you know how to do it.

o.O.o

The demons had harried them and taken their kin. Now was time to rebuild.

More had been taken before. Dozens upon dozens, enough to kill the village until new settlers moved into old spaces, as long-tailed vulpine might move into an abandoned ground rat burrow. Always when they came after the ones that ran fastest were the ones who remembered the fallen. They told the stories to those they birthed: _When the sky screams and ghosts walk, run for the forests and don't look back. _

They had never said: _Kill the demons as you might vermin. _But then, they had been men.

She isn't sure what Sheppard is.

They took him to a neighbour's house; it was at the village outskirts and a ten minute walk from her own but it was also the closest. The neighbour himself had no more use for it.

Survivors begin to straggle in as she tended to her guardian stranger, her protective killer. Jun her kin-cousin was there, and a few of the elders who had hidden, some of the younger and faster villagers, a couple of hunters who had been away from home. More and more, until she is certain almost half the village is there.

This is not unexpected. They never took many here; she had heard of worlds where entire clans were wiped out but they were closer to the Water and more important. Doubtless the villages further south were gone, their inhabitants killed or taken. Jun steps forward.

_They are gone. _

But he is not, and nor is she. Tomi is still here, clutching her stranger's hand as though it were charmed. And her stranger... Sheppard...

_We found the body of one_, Jun adds. _We will burn the remains. Some say your stranger killed it._

_He fought_, she murmurs through bloodless lips. _You see him now. It is dead. Let that be the end. _

Her kin-cousin agrees gracefully enough, the elders have no choice. Yoru is not with them, and she wonders how he died; taken in the white beam or killed on the ground. There are withered corpses everywhere outside.

A trio of hunters help her carry Sheppard to her house. Tomi runs behind, carrying the bloodstained skinning knife.

o.O.o

Sheppard does not wake, and she cannot stir him. He does not move, except in the grip of terrible dreams. He does not speak, except when they make him scream. His skin is pale grey, making the lines the ghost traced stand out harsh etchings, his breathing shallow.

She watches him and suspects the worse. That the ghost had taken his soul, or it had become trapped on the other side of what he calls (_called_) his black door. That he had been pushed back and trapped as it slammed shut behind him.

She tries to draw him back. Places food by his head to tempt him, calls his name to make him remember. For three nights he does not respond, and her heart sickens at the thought of him staying there eternal, a living corpse.

On the fourth night she gets into the bed beside him, whispering in his ear _I miss you. _

As the sun rises she wakes to the sound of him calling her name.

o.O.o

He returns to the village a hero.

The perfect tale, the child's dream. The mysterious stranger who stays with a lonely widow woman, cares for her orphan, defends them from monsters. The hero from old stories comes back to life.

If some were not saved, if there were a few new widows and orphans, then no-one cares. Heroes were only human after all.

When they see him, they do not see a tired and battered figure in mended clothing who limps behind said widow with a frightened air. Some might see the darkness of the abyss in his eyes, the broken shards of his soul testing the air and watching the skies in dread, but they cover it in a new wulfskin cloak, calling him a newborn spirit come in their time of need.

They don't see him throw the cloak off when he returns home. She doesn't speak when he buries it under a _cibo_ bush.

o.O.o

"_I'm sorry, sir, but he can't be kept here forever indefinitely. We need a permanent solution."_

"_I've got one right here..."_

"_No. We've expended too much effort just to shoot him now."_

_Pause. Ragged breathing. His; he has never heard Them breath. Just shout, curse, give orders. He wonders if this is a land of the dead. _

"_We're taking him offworld tomorrow for some fresh air... just like you requested." Sarcasm. "I can sort this out when we get back."_

_Silence. "Assuming it can be."_

o.O.o

His life is a circle. His body was broken before They found him; They broke his soul, he left (escaped) and his body was broken again, with stones and sticks and hard feet. Then he came here, and the circle revolved once more.

Now he has been beyond the black door, if only for a moment. The memories stone his soul.

He often stares into the kitchen fire, finding the relaxing motion of the blaze soothes him. Sometimes he sees pictures in the flames he cannot understand: a city with golden spires he remembers but does not, faces he knows but are nameless. More often he sees Them.

Now he is seeing the place behind the black door, wishing he can not.

_It was like a dream_, he tells Rui after he has buried the wulfskin and come inside. _On the other side everything was clear; I knew who I was and how this came to be, but when I woke all I remembered was Them coming inside. _And Their shock, Their disgust. At him.

She asks him to describe Them. She wants to fight, he can see that; defy Them and keep him here because...

He can't understand why. But it frightens him.

But being taken by Them frightens him more, so he describes Them. Their weapons, Their clothes, what They had done, the few places of Their base he had seen before being taken offworld to his eventual escape. She sits a long while and thinks.

_I have only heard of one such people_, she says slowly. _Two such, but one were destroyed, and they would not have defiled the Ancestral City with such deeds. The other is the Genii. _

He feels a chill in his soul, and a strange certainty. _Genii..._

_Yes. Once we traded with them, when I was still young. But they do not come here anymore. _

_If They come here again, you must not fight them_, he warns. She protests, but he tells her, _They will hurt you. They will hurt Tomi. If They come, do not fight and They might leave you in peace. Promise me. _

Rui is brave, but his words frighten her. She agrees and his heart grows lighter.

It plummets at her spoken thoughts. _Why would they do such things to you? Imprison you, pursue you. Did they even have a reason?_

He knows. They had spoken of it once, but it was... not a thing to be spoken here. Not in full. He could only condense it into something they could both understand.

_They said I had done things. Terrible things_, and he feels the crackle and pop of the ghost's neck bones under his hand again. He closes his eyes._ They said They had cured me, made it so I was no longer a monster. _

_You are not a monster._ _You are a hero. _

_Because I killed? _he asks.

_Because you killed the demon. You are a hero_, she says firmly.

He thinks over her words, watching the sparks fly and fade._ Then perhaps they cured me of being a hero. _

o.O.o

Spring quickens to summer, and the sky is bright with golden sunshine, but it darkens when she thinks of Sheppard's words.

Tomi's pain, or the threat of such pain, terrifies her in ways she had never felt before. The idea of men who would willingly harm a child is beyond her. No, not entirely beyond... she can imagine it happening. But she can never understand why. It is a deed of demons and wild animals, not men.

She knows if Sheppard's pursuers come, she will give him up. Not because of her promise, but because of his warning. Neither wanted Tomi to be hurt.

Eventually she puts the words out of her mind and concentrates on other matters.

One of those is Sheppard himself. She is convinced now that if he is not a spirit then he is of their kin, one sent to replace her lost husband. She can see the knowing of this is his eyes; he will bring her small gifts, crudely made carvings of forest wood, and honeyed cakes brought with an exchange of meat. Jun – who can see the dance performing as well as she can – introduces him to the village painter, and old man who drew pictures of beauty in wet ink.

Sheppard visits him regularly for over a moon, before returning with a print of his own. She sees a branch of a tree with golden blossoms so exquisite it almost seems to move with the wind, and praises him. His strange, long face turns red, and he hands over the paper scroll before fleeing.

The picture now hangs in the kitchen. He still flushes pink when he sees it.

o.O.o

The midsummer festival arrives, the bonfires are lit again. The dancer dances, but his clothes are of red and orange this time, and they flicker around him like living flames.

Sheppard joins in the chant again, but no-one spares a look at the strange, wulf-wild calls. A hero is allowed a little oddity. Already some call him _Ulu_, after the winter sprite that took the shape of a giant wulf with frost-furred mane and eyes that shimmer with the colour of a winter sky.

His eyes are not those of a cold spirit though. They gleam with the colours of a summer forest, and they hold warmth even the summer sun cannot match.

Frost without. Fire within.

Midsummer is also courting season; barely three days after the main festival is Lovers Moon, when intendeds or those who hope to be exchange gifts and pledges. But he does not know, _cannot_, so when she offers a fruit from the golden-blossomed tree, now covered in pink berries, he takes it without question.

When she tells him the meaning his reaction – choking on a mouthful – is almost funny.

The fear in his face when she looks closer is not.

His expression turns bleak after a moment, and his head bows almost wearily._ I am sorry. I had thought... the meat... it was enough payment, it didn't occur to me I should have... _He rises and swallows, not quite meeting her eyes. _I am sorry to have failed in my obligations. Do we go in the house, or...?_

_No_, she tells him, because if he carries on much more she will cry or throw up or possibly both. This is not something she had ever thought about, save in the whispers of rumours the wandering merchants brought sometimes, about the depraved practises of the more twisted people beyond the Water. The words of them sully, like spoken mud, and the taste of them is sour. Like the taste of her mouth now. _No, that is not... it was an invitation to joining. If you do not want to you simply refuse. _

Sheppard blinks and she suddenly understands more about him than she could ever want to. The very look of confusion... he has never refused anyone. Anything. The option had simply never been there.

He is still holding the fruit. The juice is staining his fingers red, the same colour as the blood rushing to his face. _I..._

_Please do not apologise_, she asks._ If any should be sorry it is those who made you think that way._ She pauses, but the question hangs in the air between them, and Sheppard might be an outsider but he is no fool.

_It was once_, he tells her impassively, eyes dull and flat._ After the raid, _and what raid was this? _I heard them speaking. I left soon afterwards. They were easy to escape. _

_What...?_

_I was not hurt. But the touches made me feel..._ he shivered. _Bad. Unclean. _

It is they who are unclean, she knows, but this is not the time for that now. It was only a mercy, or perhaps the luck of the spirits, that touches were the worst she had to heal from his mind._ It should not have felt that way. _

His head tilts slightly, expression now curious. She sees his complete faith in her and knows fear; not of him but for him. She is too small and fragile to safeguard such worship.

_Come_. She takes his hand, and his grip is warm and trusting._ I will show you. _

o.O.o

Eight days after... after, word reaches the village of strange visitors on an offworld trading post.

They carry strange weapons and wear strange uniforms; their clothes are of sharp lines and their eyes make the tinker that reports this shiver. The elders confer, then tell him that no, no-one of his description has been seen, but they will certainly say if there are any sightings...

He leaves. She goes back to the house in silence, and watches Sheppard teach Tomi to set snares in the soft earth.

When she climbs into bed beside him that night she says nothing.

o.O.o

_Endlessness around him. The space was too big. No walls, no ceiling. When he looks up he falls towards the clouds, drawn to the endless sky and the promises there. _

"_At least someone's happy." Mockery. Their words always either bite or lie. "Enough babysitting. Time to go back."_

_It is then that the water appears and spews terror._

o.O.o

The sun is dying, and autumn had drawn a red-gold cloak over the forest. As though sensing its finish life itself was putting on one last spurt; the trees are heavy with fruit and everywhere there is the chatter of birds and three-fingered treemice. This is the deep breath before the plunge, the last gasp before the end, and so is savoured by those that were lucky enough to live it.

He is no exception. He thinks often about death, about dieing... even here. It is inescapable that They should find him, unthinkable that They might not. Eventually his life here will come to an end and the darkness will take him back; every day it draws closer. Every breath might be his last.

So he makes each one count.

The ones that dissolve into vapour in the forest were well-spent ones, only second to the ones that mingle with Rui's before they ever faded. But when they are counterpointed with the slighter silver-mist of a young child, they become truly precious in a way he only understands in his bones.

Immortality is relative, or so Rui and her kin had taught him. It is achieved with offspring, with remembered good deeds and works shown to the next generation, but the greatest way, and the most enduring, was the moulding of a child. To be the guide that leads them to adulthood without harm.

This he understands, as he watches Tomi tickle fish in a rushing stream. The bubbles of his prey mingle with the chuckles of the water, seeming to make the whole wood laugh with them as the child leans over further, looking back to see if his hero approves.

To be put in such a highly valued place is strange. So many before found it easier to look down on him rather than up, yet here he is elevated. A darling murderer, their treasured killer, _hero_.

Killing the ghost-demon had been easy – as easy as shooting a buck in twilight, or flipping fish from a stream. His body had carried him forward and it had been done and he had felt... nothing. It frightened him still, that he could look in the eyes of another and see the life leave without remorse.

And it had been so familiar. As though he had done it a thousand times before.

The look in its eyes as the light faded...

_His_ eyes. The ghost had been male. The ghost had...

The ghost...

A splash and a whoop draw him back to the present, where a pink-scaled fish is writhing in the leaves by his feet. It is fat; they will eat well tonight and he praises Tomi accordingly, both watching as it flops and gasps and dies in the suffocating air.

He sees the light fade in its eyes as well, and wonders if it knew that its death serves life. That all deaths serve life.

And the truth, because when the ghost had met his eyes there had not been triumph or even hunger, but recognition.

o.O.o

The fall of the year is their busiest time. There are fruits to preserve, animals to hunt, nuts to be gathered, roots to be dug, graincakes to bake and ale to brew in order for winter to be survivable. Into this Sheppard throws himself with enthusiasm, bringing back meat, berries, and fresh fish each day for her, watching the fruits fall from the gold-blossom tree, seeing it die. Holding her eyes and smiling, his eyes oddly intent as they lay together sated under the orange autumn moons.

As though he was remembering the present while it happened, storing each expression, each loving word in his mind as a carver might engrave runes into wood.

She wonders if he tried that before, in Their cells. If he had had a mate then, children, friends, people he loved, people of his blood that he had sworn to remember and lost as the black door rose, before They had let him slip through their fingers, before the raiders had come.

She asks him this once, if he remembers what he saw on the other side of the door. He shrugs.

_Fragments. Broken things. _His counterpoint thought that they were as shattered as he had been – still was – was clear in his face._ I remember... feelings. A female who led us, people I cared for. A father in the distance. I had a mother as well. Enemies. Allies. Times of conflict, times of peace. And... I have names. _

_Whose?_

_I don't know. _He looks up at her, hazel eyes confused, the forest shadowed. _I remember McKay. _My_ name. Sheppard. I remember the meanings of others. Warriors most of them. There are names with no faces, images without names. Rotting darkness. Endless blackness with many stars. A city with golden towers. _

_Atlantis_, she murmurs. His head shoots up, his eyes now wide and wondering.

_Yes_, he breathes. _Atlantis. _

o.O.o

The naming of things holds power. With the name of the golden city she has unlocked his mind and brought back the dreams.

They come nightly now, making him twist and moan beneath the covering blankets, trying to escape what can never be escaped. She wakes to his cries and wakes him in turn, holding him as he surfaces back to the living.

_They're all dead_, he says one night, his voice a bare sob as his skin shivers and his tears wet her shoulder. _I am the last. _

The next morning he does not speak of it, and she does not ask further.

She still has not told him of the rumours.

o.O.o

Tomi knows of neither rumours nor nightmares. His existence is the best it has ever been; they have meat every day or nearly so, sweets are almost moonly instead of hasty snatches from pitying friends and his new daddy is the bravest, smartest man in the village. As the first snow falls and the autumn leaves crinkle in the frosting air she hears him boast to his companions about Sheppard killing the ghost while the object of their adoration listens with weary patience.

She wonders why he accepts the worship of children so much more easily than that of the adults. Perhaps he knows the young need heroes.

They pester him to describe the fight, but he declines. They beg to hear where he learned such things, dreaming of wise teachers or harsh taskmasters with stern faces but warm hearts, asking where he has come from. He pales the colour of the snowflakes and tells them his past is his own.

As they journey together towards the cottage past the outskirts he says he lied. His past was not his own, because They still had it.

o.O.o

_A kick in the ribs. It made the black door tremble with déjà vu, but the feeling slithered out of his hand like old meat._

"_That all you grabbed? One scrawny addlebrain?" _

"_He's tall enough, boss. And the colouring'll up his price." Harsh laugh. "'Sides, it's not his brain they'll pay for."_

"_They won't pay for the rest of him either if he's as weak as he looks." Disgust, then resignation. "Might as well make do. Dial the ring and jump us a few more times."_

_They walk through the water seven times, but on each planet snow is falling._

o.O.o

Snow is falling.

In the forest the dead limbs provide enough shelter to crisscross the white with black earth or withered brown leaves crisp and rotting in the biting air. Hunting has gotten harder; this is his third trip in as many days and no meat to bring back but an undernourished treemouse.

He is worried. Tomi needs food; _Rui_ needs food, to stave off the cold. It is perverse the time of greatest need the game would be scarce, yet in the warm moons of summer he would let prey pass by because he could carry no more. But he gives this no more than a moment of passing anger, of frustration that he is failing them.

Life is. Time spent bemoaning this was time that could be used to hunt or gather.

A rustle under the rime-killed ferns stops him. He freezes and draws back an arrow; whatever the creature it will be _meat_, and edible. Anything is when hunger gnaws your belly.

A wulf steps out.

He has heard tales of them, even seen them at a distance, but nothing can prepare anyone for a full meeting. This one is huge, half again his size, its frost-tipped fur mane interspersed with stiff black guard hairs the same colour as its massive claws and the fathomless depths of its pupils. They are ringed with amber, a strangely warm colour for something that seemed so much at home in the cold.

He aims carefully. This is more than meat, it is a feast. Wulf reputedly tasted foul, but it fills bellies and gives strength, which was more than enough...

It is looking at him.

He avoids its gaze, feeling absurd yet not loosing the arrow. The stare is level and faintly accusatory, as though it can read his thoughts and its death in his mind, or see the wulfskin they had thrown around his shoulders after his well-timed murder. And it is not afraid.

He is.

He lowers the bow. The wulf disappears without a backwards glance, but he feels better for it. There is one less stain on his soul, that much less blood on his hands.

He takes the treemouse back to Rui. It isn't bad.

o.O.o

He is outside again.

The last time she had found him like this he had still been broken; the last time she had found him like this the snow had settled in his hair and he had been staring at the stars with longing and hope and fear. As though beholding a great jewel that men would fight and die for, something of terrible value, infinite worth.

Now he is not broken – merely a little chipped at the edges – but he is still rimmed with frost and staring at the stars. He likes watching the night sky, but she doesn't understand his fascination. For those who live in the ghost's shadow, the sky held only fear.

He tells her he dreams sometimes of flying. Of looking down on the backs of birds and soaring above even the clouds.

She does not scoff. Those dreams are better than the others that haunt him so.

She puts her hand on his shoulder, shaking him a little. He looks up at her and smiles slightly.

_They are creaking again. _

The cryptic comment is duly ignored. It's too cold for puzzles. _Come inside. There is food waiting._ Hunger motivates him, along with loyalty and fear. She thinks anger might have once, but he is never angry now. Like so many other things that might cause him pain, he has locked it behind the black door.

He rises and follows her, but looks back one final time at the sky.

o.O.o

The cold brings sickness, a drowning of the lungs that preys on the weak and vulnerable. In the village the old succumb fast and the children are listless, hacking fluids like old men smoking riss-grass.

Tomi is one of them.

As the malady takes hold he grows hot and dizzy, complaining that his limbs hurt and crying for water. She frets and worries and forces him to drink a little broth that he immediately vomits again, praying to any that might listen for her son to be spared. Already she has seen funeral fires down below; the wrapped bodies perched on top are pitifully small.

One hears. He leaves silently and returns that dusk with a small but perfect buck, one eye missing where the arrow had struck.

Meat is better than magic. Her son lives.

The one who provided the cure makes her leave, telling her to rest. She falls involuntarily and wanders in the dark before rising at the dawn, sleep's sweet forgetfulness fading in the day's harsh light. A strange sound is hovering around the cottage.

She rises quickly and follows its stream, but stops at the doorway of her son's small room.

Tomi is there; curled beneath a pile of furs, little face smooth, finally peaceful in sleep. Sheppard is beside him and it is he that makes the strange sound, a wordless crooning like mournful birdsong and the howl of a wulf and the soft sigh of a summer breeze through new leaves. He falters when he sees her and looks abashed.

_Don't stop_, she says softly._ It's beautiful. _

He doesn't resume the odd humming, but a slight, self-mocking smile makes his mouth curl. _I do not know the words to the song. Perhaps there are none. _

_It is still beautiful. What is it called?_

_It has no name I remember. _He looks at the sleeping child again, and his face holds something she cannot describe. _It does not need one. The name is in its being. _

After she guides him back to their bed and lies down beside him she thinks over his words and sees the truth in them that she could never tell him.

o.O.o

Midwinter comes and goes. The dance is performed, the fires lit, the right songs are sung to coax the sun back to its zenith. The year tips invisibly from dark to light, and warmth creeps across the world.

In the stories, the winter spirits always left when the year turns. The sun drives them away.

It is the day after the spring dawning festival when she is trading with the village tanner for new material. Sheppard's tabard hood had frayed and his boots were worn to skin-thin slippers through constant wear. He is with her, for once not away stalking in the forest, instead choosing to hover over Tomi with a sternly paternal air. He has not yet forgotten the illness.

That is when Jun runs hotfoot into the square, and her world falls apart.

_Strangers! Coming this way!_

Her heart freezes, but her head is quick with soothing lies. It has been a year at least since Sheppard escaped Their clutches, They were sure to have given up by now, written him as dead, lost interest in one, broken-souled outlander. The visitors must be tinkers or traders, or refugees from some ghost-burnt world.

Jun halts in front of her and burns her hopes to ash. Tall, strange clothing, strange weapons. Four of them, all intent on this destination.

Sheppard stirs, his words dropping like hollow rocks.

_They are coming. _

o.O.o

_He runs. In time he is going to become better at running, a true professional, but now his bare feet find every twig and stone. They had taken his shoes, nearly taken everything else as well, would have if he hadn't struggled and the bushy-bearded leader hadn't said sharp words about damage and lowered prices. _

_They had contented themselves with callous touches and left him. Until the water had flared again and They had come through. As he is running screams echo behind him and the sharp bangs of Their weapons make his head spike with pain. _

_He reaches the water, and when he goes through he doesn't look back. _

_It will be a long, long time before he stops running. _

o.O.o

He has nowhere left to run to.

He thinks about it. thinks of taking his bow, his quiver, the arrows he fletched himself and the bag Rui wove for him, taking them all and food and running into the forest. Of following the wulf into the mountains to live or die as they did, cheating Them one last time.

Not possible. They are too close behind, and Rui is vulnerable. He has not forgotten the sounds from the raiders' camp when he escaped. Better for him to be close by, to use himself as Rui might use her last bag of meat to bargain with.

So instead he is hiding. Hugging his knees on their bed and listening to the footsteps outside, his bow useless in the kitchen downstairs.

But there is one last thing. The ghost found that out and humans are much easier to kill.

He grips the handle of the skinning knife and knows he will only be able to strike once.

o.O.o

They are here. Outside her own house, looking around with faintly contemptuous glances, Their leader the only one that deigns to speak with her. She wants to rage and curse, scream at these intruders to leave, but Sheppard's warning echoes in her ears and Tomi is frozen beside her, too scared to speak or run.

She will not risk his life. Not now. Not like this.

They question her. She tells as much truth as she dares and lies as well as she is able, but They have sharp hearing and can scent a lie as well as a wulf might a wounded buck. Two peel off and start to enter the house, a man and a woman who walks like a man. Their gender apparently makes no difference; both Their faces hold the same stone-hard wariness.

She moves to stop them, but the warning echoes again. Her son is so small.

The leader grabs her arm and she turns, seeing his eyes for the first time. They are as Sheppard's but darker, the forest in shadow. _Don't worry. If he's in there they won't hurt him. _

Such a dirty, dirty lie she cannot even speak, but tenses and prays that he had the sense to hide, that he forgot the danger to them both and ran, that he would be free and safe and return to her, that they might stay together for the rest of their long, long lives.

A shout sounds. The leader speaks into a black box and glances at her, his look oddly pitying. She sees the message in the darken woods behind his gaze and draws Tomi nearer, now fearful.

The door opens. Three step through, but there is only one she cares about and he is pale, white as the snow she had found him in, white as the rims of his summer-wood eyes as they roll in fear. On either side They are holding his arms; unnecessary with the bonds They had snapped around his wrists.

He sees her and the colours of the wood flare. He, to, cares about Tomi. But she cannot stop crying out.

_No! _She runs forward, hearing Tomi's wail, catching the arm of the man holding her stranger as though grasping a poisonous rock-snake. _Leave him alone, he isn't yours, what do you want with him?_

He shakes her off, muttering that she should be glad They have him now, that if she truly knew who her stranger was she would thank them for taking him away. Sheppard's face is now grey, his eyes are distant, and she knows as firmly as she knows he is no threat that he is retreating behind the black door, where They cannot hurt him. Already the past year is no more than a dream.

He is looking at the fruit trees. They have blossomed early this year.

The fourth man says something she cannot understand, the leader takes her shoulder gently and pulls her back. They are taking him away and the story is ending, the hero leaving as heroes always will. She bows her head to hide her tears and weeps into the dusty ground.

The first tear is pebbled beneath her feet when a terrible cry splits the air.

She looks up and sees a struggle, someone falling to the ground. They are gathering, Their weapons drawn but she does not care; Sheppard is in the middle and he is in danger. It is not until she had pushed her way through the confusion that she realises she was wrong.

Sheppard is past danger. They cannot hurt him anymore.

He is curled on his side, as Tomi had been; face more peaceful than she has ever seen it. The skinning knife is still clutched in his hands, blade buried under his ribs, his eyes already beginning to stare. As she approaches they shift up, lashes fluttering like the beat of insects' wings, but when she kneels beside him they flicker, fade, and finally wink out.

She looks to where he is staring. The trees are covered in golden blooms.

o.O.o

They leave. Their prey has fled to where They will not follow, free at last, and there is nothing left for Them to stay for. But when one hears her calling Sheppard's name, blinded in grief, he stops. His face is so strange she listens to his words.

_Was that what he told you to call him?_

She nods, salt water falling to anoint the dead man's hair.

_That is not his name. _

Her heart breaks. Her stranger was a stranger again, no family, no past and now no name, because They had taken even that from him. The leader sees her distress and looks almost ashamed.

_Do you know his name?_

The other shrugs. _I know what we called him. _

_Tell me_, she says, and he does.

o.O.o

The villagers lay him to rest after They depart, shrouded the colour of new-fallen snow. The songs are mournful now, the steps of the dance heavy as he is consigned to the ground, and there is no joy when they leave.

They bury him with a branch of golden blossoms.

o.O.o

That autumn there is a new voice in the house.

She rises after her birthing to see the new baby; he is lying in the cot and watching the world go by in wonder. His tilted eyes are the colour of a summer forest, and his hair is as white as the fur of a winter wulf.

She weeps as she sees him, and calls him Todd.


End file.
